These are photos taken in May of 2018. The bricks on the grass in the top left photo were knocked down by us just pushing them over the side. I show the photo with Damian’s car because you can see the grassing circle in the center of the drive which is no longer there. It was dicey driving over that area because it dipped down. We were lucky the driveway didn’t fail before we finally got someone out here to repair it.
These photos were taken in October of 2019. We thought we had people coming out to do the work so Dave knocked down the brick wall with his tractor. I wanted to save as much of the brick as I could for some unknown project. The photo on the right shows how bad the pillars were. We had decided we weren’t going to keep them and then changed our minds when we talked to Billy Young. He knew of a mason that could come out and fix them so that is what we did. They just had to raid my stack of bricks because my neighbor, Nancy, and I had already started taking the brick from the pillars. She has already put the ones she took to good use as a garden bed border.
Billy Young came out to give us an estimate on July 10 and started the work on July 17. They started early and were here until 10pm. Billy wanted to get the conduits in so that is what they did.
Only Billy’s partner (never did learn his name) worked on Saturday the 18th. I think he just wanted to get a chance to use the little front loader. A different crew came on Sunday to erect the frame for the concrete.
They poured the concrete on Monday.
And this is what it looked like Tuesday evening.
On Wednesday they prepared the area for asphalt. I should mention that they are doing all this in a heat wave. Temps were around 90 and it was very sticky.
And despite the rain we are done. The brick pillar on the right in the photo on the left was redone by the mason as was the same pillar on the other side of the drive. The other pillar and wall was still good enough.
It seems so much bigger without that grassy circle. And you can see the brick repair better in this photo above right. It’s covered in plastic to protect it for a couple of days.
They reseeded the straw covered area. I’d like to plant it with natives this fall.
We need to put up some sort of bumper so people unfamiliar with the drive don’t go over this approximately 6 foot drop. There is a slope where the rocks are, but the area over the conduit is a drop. I’m not exactly thrilled with how it turned out. Grateful it is done, but I’d wanted a block wall, not this expanse of rock. It is nice having a smooth driveway and I’m getting used to the view.
